Stalker
The stalker patiently follows in the prey's shadow. A hunt may lead across river-cut valleys and snow-struck mountains, into the darkest forests where not even the stone owl dares to speak and deeper still between the twisting roots of sycamores that have watched the tides of countless wars. A hunt may last for longer than the bloom of spring and the cold of winter, but the stalker will not venture from the trail. Step by step he nears his prey. And when he strikes it will be from behind.
In the seventh year after the Black Knight razed the Tellius Empire, Ares is the prey that blinds himself into being the stalker.
Between the trembling tops of the spruce trees, the gray sky darkens. His arm throbs, but he stifles the urge to grab his shoulder. Same as ever. He has to reach the village before sundown. Without a sound, he sneaks down the road that twists between the trunks, half-conquered by mosses. When a twig snaps, it is never him.
The smell of snow hangs in the air. Ares tightens his cape around his neck and picks up pace.
His scabbard gives off traitorous sounds when it claps against his thigh. Not yet. The sword has waited for too long in its confinement, it hungers and snaps like a starved wolf. The freezing hilt bites into Ares' hand, the steel tempts him. Not yet.
Maybe in the nearby village he will find the crucial hint to lead him further on the prey's path. He must be getting closer. Earlier today, a villager stormed down the twisting road, his eyes wide and his words barely comprehensible. The panicked fragments he spat out give cause for hope. The prey has raged less than a day's journey ahead.
Ares is getting closer.
Seven years ago, the village bustled, and many curls of chimney smoke promised travelers the warmth of a fireplace, maybe even the smell of chicken stew bubbling over the flame. But no one dares to light a fire now. Travelers spell trouble. The symbol of the two-sided tree carved into the wooden archway at the village's entrance has faded. Tellius has only known one flag for the past years, and it is black and unforgiving.
Ares passes under the archway. He set up his camp in the bare blackberry bushes outside the village not too long ago. The village has seen little bustling then, the people quick to close their rotten shutters and shabby curtains. But now the shutters lie in splinters on the road. Wooden doorframes, porches, and entire stables stick out to him like broken bones no one has the strength to heal. Or the passion to even try. Why waste breath on repairs when the next attack is sure to come, and sure to come soon?
An old man stumbles between the ruins of a chicken stable. The birds have all flown off to friendlier sights and left their owner to dig through the splinters in a desperate search for at least an egg that will fill his stomach. Dried blood sticks to his forehead.
When he notices Ares, he gives up his search emptyhanded. "You should look for a quartier elsewhere. We have nothing to provide you with, good sir."
Ares' cape hides the traitorous shimmer of his armor, but the gold trimming is as out of place in this destroyed village as a full banquet of grilled pheasant.
"What happened here?" he asks.
"Can you not tell? The same that happens everywhere. The Black Knight."
Triumph! The Black Knight was here less than a day ago. If Ares hurries, he may catch up to him. The sword at his side rattles already.
The elation flees as quickly as it came. It all comes down to the sword. Last time when Ares marched across the bridge and into the gaping jaws of the Black Knight's fortress, his sword managed a single dent in the black armor. Nothing more. And he paid dearly for the attempt. To catch the enemy out in the twisting depths of Tellius' forests may raise his chances of success, and a silent blade in the night does not need to pierce armor. But with this weak sword in this weak hand, can Ares even hope to succeed?
The villager cares not for Ares' inner debate and goes on talking. "We got lucky, actually. He only struck down a few morons who tried to stop him out on the street. Grima and Naga award their bravery. We other ones hid as best we could. Fought like a beast, the Black Knight. You've never seen such a thing. You'd think he only had to turn his head towards you, and you'd have to drop dead. Even his cape was twisting like a beast on its own, on my word. But we got lucky. Have you seen the village further down south? Splinters is what he left of it, nothing but splinters."
So the story goes in many villages. Ares has seen the run-down huts, barely held together by a hope that fades with each passing day. And he has seen the ruins afterwards. Sometimes a small shoe sticks out of the rubble. The enemy who can cause such destruction is more than worth hunting.
If only Ares could.
"In which direction did he go when he left?" he asks.
"Don't know. Don't care much as long as he goes elsewhere. Since the fall of the capital city the years are feeling longer, good sir."
Ares' hand closes around his sword hilt. "He will be defeated. He will pay."
"How long has it been? Seven years? I was believing in the myth too for a while, we all did. The mythic weapon that could shed light in his darkness and kill him when all human steel fails. Would have been too good to be true."
Ares straightens. Can it be?
He lunges for the villager's shoulder and shakes it. "What do you know about the mythic weapon? Tell me, I need to know!"
"I don't know nothing, good sir, nothing. It's one of the orphans who always goes on about that otherworldly light. Don't know where she picked the story up. She came from outside some three years ago. Only the gods know how she walked all this way through the woods by herself. Or maybe they don't know either. If they saw what's become of Tellius, they would hurry to place that weapon into a capable hand, no?"
Ares' fingers tense. "Where is that orphan?"
"By the rotting stable down the street, I would think. They always scurry around there. Harsh times to be growing up in. Don't envy them one bit. If the Black Knight doesn't get them, maybe the winter will. It looks like it's going to be a cold one."
The man bends down and turns over another broken plank in search for the white shimmer that promises a belly that may not be full but at least a little less agonizingly empty. Thick snowflakes gather on his deformed shoulders.
He seems to remember something then and straightens to look at Ares. "In light or shadow, may our paths cross again," he says with the solemnity expected for the old saying.
May our paths cross again – it implies a wish to reunite, to survive long enough to experience another meeting. Few utter the phrase now. Too often has it ended in disappointment.
May our paths cross again. To Ares, it has always sounded like a lie.
His steps lead him to the rotting stable without delay. He has picked up a new lead, and the promise of a successful hunt invigorates his sore feet after countless days of travel, aching with the fear that the trail may be lost between the dark ferns.
He steps into the dimness of the stable. The wind hisses through the slits in the wood, and from a hole in the roof, snow drifts onto moldy hay. Out of the corners, child eyes glare at Ares like a pack of bony cats that only know how to strike at the hand that wants to pet them.
"Who of you knows about the mythic weapon?" Ares asks.
The orphans duck a little deeper into their corners. He has no time for this.
He pushes back his cape, and even in the dimness the hilt of his sword sticks out with a blackness deeper still. "Who is telling the stories? I know it is one of you. Show yourself!"
Several children flinch. Then, one after the other, fingers rise to point out a girl squeezed near the back. Her hair has the same dirty color as the hay stacks around her. She hugs herself against evil or hunger, likely both.
Ares pulls her to her feet by the arm. She wriggles, but without force.
"I have provisions," he says. "Do you want bread? One loaf all for yourself. You can have it if you tell me what you know about the mythic weapon."
The girl rocks back and forth without looking at him.
He has no time for games. Can she not see that every minute the Black Knight draws breath, injustice eats farther into him? Is she blind to the dust on his boots, the tears in his cape, the year of searching that disfigure his already disfigured body?
Ares shakes the girl. "Where was it you heard about the weapon?"
She presses her mouth into a white line.
"Where is the sword? Tell me!"
A young woman yanks the girl out of Ares' grip and shelters her with her thin arms. Her pink sleeves make for a poor shield. Any sword could cut through them both. Still the woman, hardly old enough to warrant the term, glares at Ares with a defiance all but eradicated in Tellius. She needs no words to reprimand him. Her expression suffices.
Ares' hand drops. "Apologies," he mumbles.
The orphans judge him with their glaring eyes. Each of them mocks him, and as soon as he leaves, their laughter will bounce between the hay stacks. They know. They know about the mythic sword, but they guard their secrets with dirty hands and bony arms. Snow piles around Ares' feet, the wind howls more angrily now.
Tomorrow, he will try again. Whether the orphan girl spills her secrets or not, he will depart afterwards. The Black Knight's trail might grow cold. And if the spruce trees swallow him again… No, this time Ares will succeed. For one year he has whetted his sword against bandit axes, this time he will breach the black armor. Nothing else matters.
The hollow of a dead tree outside the village hides Ares for the night. Behind the snow screens, the huts protrude as darker shadows out of the night. The people have extinguished their hearths early. If they merge with the blackness, maybe it will not find them.
The snow hill outside the hollow grows, and Ares pulls his feet farther under his cape. His arm throbs.
The air is hard to breathe.
Under the cape, he traces the twisting decorations of his sword's cross guard. Another day lost. A black helmet flashes before his eyes even before he closes them, the sound of flesh dropping to the ground. He gnaws at the memory, listens to the ice crystals as they whip the tree until it groans. In this storm, his prey cannot flee far. Soon their swords will clash again. Then the laughter will fall silent.
In his dream, Ares is hunting too. But the sword he chases slips always out of reach, and when he pulls the hand back, blood drips from his fingers.
Shadows again…
Ares' muscles ache from exhaustion when he wakes up. His uneven pulse pounds in his head, and sometime overnight he must have rolled halfway out of the hollow. A failed attempt to grasp the ungraspable. Nevertheless, he climbs to his feet to face another cold day.
Crows announce a feast this morning. Their caws ring out between the snow-strangled trees. One crow hops near Ares' rotting shelter but finds nothing worth pecking at. His flesh is still too warm. With another caw, the bird darts over the withered blackberry bushes towards the village.
Ares follows. The churned snow crunches under his unbalanced steps.
Frost covers the smell of blood and scattered innards, but the sound of beaks ripping at flesh grows louder. He knows the sound. And when he reaches the shredded remains of the entrance archway, he knows the sight.
They lie on the road. The crows flutter around them and peck at whatever snapped beams and wooden splinters do not cover. A hand in a pink sleeve sticks out from under a destroyed doorframe like a tuft of waxflowers.
Ares retches. The crows dart when he comes closer, and under mocking shrieks, they surrender the rotting stable to him. Something soft gives away under his boots, and he clings to the one support beam of the stable that hasn't snapped, his hand slipping on blood, his knees threatening to surrender.
A mad force has hacked the stable into kindling. Between the roof splinters lies a shock of straw-colored hair. The girl's head faces Ares. The crows have pecked out her eyes.
Ares manages three steps before he drops into the snow and vomits. The girl's face alternates with a black helmet, back and forth, until the helmet crushes all else. The Black Knight came to finish what he started, and this time his armored hand struck true. Tellius is not a land of survivors. It has no room for lucky villages.
Ares buries his nails into his shoulder, a helpless attempt at keeping himself together. He should have seen it coming. The Black Knight leaves no prey alive. And when tongues speak of mythical weapons and when hands dare to imagine its weight, he crushes them.
His sword weighs heavy at Ares' side. Useless. A sprint of less than a minute separated him from the slaughter, from the Black Knight, the end to all his shadows. Worthless. Weak. In death, the laughter grows louder.
Ares needs six hours to collect all the bodies for the pyre. He can barely drag, let alone carry them, and his fingers become stiff from the cold. After he dug the last body from the collapsed remains of a cellar, the pile looks small in the snow mud. People take up little space, and in the vastness of Tellius, this village measures no more than a single twig in the tallest oak tree; cut off all the same.
Thick smoke clouds rise over the spruce trees when Ares lights the pyre. The crows cry out their discontent, and the smell of burnt flesh presses down on the village ruins. The Black Knight has to notice. In the ash-laden clouds hangs Ares' challenge. One man has survived. One man still stands to avenge the dead and the crippled.
But no one answers Ares' challenge.
When the pyre has burned down to embers, he wanders around the village in expanding circles, his own mad spiral. The trail has gone cold again. No snapped twig reveals where the Black Knight turned.
No signs of him in the neighboring villages either. The people there cower, but other than the smoke above the northern trees, they know nothing of the attack. When Ares asks about the mythic weapon, they duck or shrug or laugh it off. He hunts his own shadow.
Another month lost.
The snow piles, and the frost eats into the spruce trunks. Without a trail to follow, Ares stumbles southwards. Will the patrols on Leonster's border even recognize him? Leif must have grown tired of Ares' failures by now. But he has nowhere else to turn, and no place in Tellius allows him to lick his wounds or shrub the stench of burnt flesh from his skin.
Four wyvern miles from Leonster, Ares sneaks through the darkness. In the east, the Pheraen border wall blocks the horizon, and the watchfires on its battlements glare into the night in search for refugees who dare to cross into the Empire. In these forests, anyone is prey to Pherae's archers, and since last year, Ares learnt to travel this route by night.
Even then, a crossing into Pherae remains a near impossible feat. The smooth black stones of the wall offer no grooves and not even the slimmest hole to place a foot into. The battlements tower far out of reach of any grapplehook. Guards wait with a quiver of arrows at all times, and they always hunger for the flesh of refugees.
Tonight, someone tries the impossible feat.
Shouts erupt on the battlements, and torches hurry to answer the alarm. Ares darts behind a tree, but the Pheraens aim their arrows at a target a little farther north. Steel heads buzz through the night. The guards set a few of them on fire, and the stretch of tree-less land in the wall's shadow flares.
Ares sneaks away from the flickering lights. Most likely the Pheraens shot down whoever tried to cross. Their methods are efficient, their wall strong enough to lock even the Black Knight in Tellius. Ares crouches deeper into the shadows and keeps his head low while he waits for the silence to announce the border crosser's death. After a minute, the noise of arrows fades, and the torches spread along the battlements once more.
He follows the slope of the terrain, barely visible in the starlight but well remembered by his feet. When a twig snaps, it is never him.
Then who is it?
Two pairs of feet pound behind him, a clipped, wounded breath and the panting of a child. The cone of a mage lamp bounces between the trees, so small that even the best archer on the wall cannot see it.
Ares does.
Bandits, enemies, they are coming for him, they are here to slice off a piece for themselves. He unsheathes his sword, and when two shadows stumble over the slope crest, he holds the blade to the throat of the taller one.
He pauses.
The mage lamp reveals the face of a woman with long, braided hair. She sways, but as soon as she realizes the sharpness of Ares' blade, she wraps her arms protectively around the ten-year-old boy next to her. Two arrows stick out of her shoulder, and one of her knees trembles, but her posture betrays her knight training. The situation could not differ more, and still Ares' thoughts race back to the woman with the pink sleeves and the girl she protected from him. They died. And looking at the blood dripping from her arrow wounds, this woman and her boy may join them soon.
Ares lowers his sword.
"You were trying to cross over the wall?" he asks.
Denial would be pointless, and so the woman nods. The boy only glares at Ares. He almost disappears behind the tall, wrapped parcel he presses to his chest.
Ares could most easily hand them over to the Pheraen guards. Rumor has it they give out rewards for border crossers, and with Leif's signet ring on his finger, they would think twice before testing their arrows on him. But the pink sleeves refuse to leave his thoughts.
"This is Klein's section of the wall," he says. "The guards under his command are the sharpest marksmen. Killing border crossers is the only joy they know. The baron who oversees the wall fortress farther south is laxer in his duties. He rarely sends soldiers far out. I can show you the way."
The woman struggles to keep her eyes focused, but her gratitude shines through. "Thank you."
"First you should dress your wounds." Ares fishes a roll of bandages out of his bag and hands one end to the woman. "Keep this taut."
Blood sprouts when he pulls out the arrows, and the woman winces. Her cheeks pale to make her green eyes shine even more ghostly. But she has the undeniable air of a knight around her. As such, she knows how to swallow any pained cries. Ares in turn has more than enough practice to apply bandages with one hand, and his fingers hurry through their task without fail. The boy watches each of his movements and clutches his parcel more tightly.
"I owe you," the woman says after Ares finishes his work. She still needs rest and the hands of a proper healer, but in Tellius she will find neither. "My name is Titania. In old Tellius, my life would be yours to command, but my duty first and foremost is to him." She strokes the boy's blue hair.
The two share little to no resemblance; where her features are slender, he is broad and hard for his age, and neither the shape nor the color of their eyes match each other. Why should this Titania throw herself between a blade and a stranger, a boy unrelated by blood? She could lead her halberd against the Black Knight instead.
Ares swallows his questions. He has no intention to share his failures with Titania either.
"The place I mentioned is a quarter of a wyvern mile away. We should hurry while it is still dark." Ares reaches for the parcel in the boy's arm. "I can carry this for you."
The boy slaps his hand aside. "Back off."
Stunned, Ares draws back. Something about the boy's expression irks him, but he cannot pin down the reason.
Titania squeezes the boy's shoulder. "We should go."
Ares' spine itches with two people in his back, and he marches as fast as he dares without making a sound. The torches on the wall still flicker in steady intervals, but soon they will reach the part of the border where no guards stand watch between them. One soldier lights them at dusk and another collects the burnt stumps at dawn, but otherwise the wall soars unmanned into the night. Unless they changed the patrol patterns. Sooner rather than later they will. If Ares can find the weak link in Pherae's border behemoth, King Roy will too.
He throws a look over his shoulder. The boy glares back. His traditional Tellius headband does a poor job at keeping his tousled hair in order. What might be so special about him that Titania took two arrows for him?
She notices Ares' looks. "His father died three years ago. I kept him hidden since, but more and more villages have been destroyed by the Black Knight in the last year. You must have heard. The stranglehold is tightening." Her eyes turn to the boy. "And I fear what will happen if he stays."
Tellius knows only two futures for its people: the future of the stalker and that of the prey. In five years, maybe sooner, the boy will know which one belongs to him.
Then again, does Ares know?
The strain of Titania's injuries and soon the shadow of the wall silence her attempts at conversation. Ares slows, softens his steps. A tawny owl shrieks, but from the battlements only silence rings out.
At the tree line, Ares motions Titania to snuff her mage lamp. The crystal suspended in its glass cage dulls. Before them stretch three hundred yards of tree stumps and frozen grass. The shooting range. Every other year, Pherae rains oil-drenched arrows over Tellius and burns down every bud and hem that dared to come near the wall. The shooting range offers no cover. At Klein's part of the wall, they say the bodies are piling so quickly the guards have to send out the oil-drenched arrows every month. Otherwise the stench of rotting flesh would ruin their oatmeal.
Ares readies himself for the sprint first. He has the best chances of reaching the wall before archers will find his range. If any archers patrol the battlements.
He counts to three and darts forward. Frozen grass crunches under his boots, but he tries to ignore the noise as he does the thumping of his pulse, listening for alarmed shouts. Nothing.
Halfway across the shooting range, he stops. Takes a few steps to the left and the right. Watches for movements between the torches overhead. Nothing.
He waves Titania and the boy to follow.
A few crafty Tellius refugees have used the local baron's lax patrols to their advantage. They drove thick metal nails into the black stone. The makeshift treads lead halfway up the wall, and unless a guard looks from the battlement directly down, they will not notice the unwanted addition to their wall. The remaining half requires a grapple hook to master. Even with the treads, the climb borders on suicidal, especially for a boy. His arms barely reach the first nail.
Titania, although the bandage around her shoulder darkens with blood, turns to thank Ares. "Now I owe you my life twice."
"Stay cautious on the other side," Ares says. "The stairs might still be guarded, especially when you approach the fortress."
Titania places a hand on his arm. "Come with us. I have a few friends in Altea. You are too young to throw your life away in Tellius."
Ares pulls back from the burning warmth of her touch. "Who said anything about throwing a life away? I have a fight to win. And I will prove myself worthy of the sword."
"I understand." Titania glances at the boy who fastens his parcel to his back to have both hands free. "I worry he will feel the same. That Tellius will pull him back only to deal him another unspeakable loss. Please be careful on your journey. For your sake, I hope you will find peace even if you may not find victory."
With these words, she turns to help the boy with his parcel. The cloth slips for a moment to reveal the handle of a sword. Faint gold carvings decorate the metal. A strange possession for a boy, and stranger even to find in the half-starved, half-strangled lands of Tellius. A knight's or a lord's son then, with an heirloom too great for his small hands.
These stories never end well. The proof is sliced into Ares' own flesh.
He waits long enough for Titania to wrap her grapplehook around her arm and lift the boy onto the first tread. What becomes of them outside of Tellius no longer concerns him. If they flee and give up the hunt, so be it. He will not.
Peace cannot exist without victory. And the stalker cannot exist without prey to hunt.
Ares melts back into the blackness of the forest. Another night lost where the Black Knight still breathes. But maybe it was not for nothing. Perhaps this small success in helping Titania and the boy escape will balance out Ares' failures. Spared blood here for blood spilled elsewhere. Is that not the greatest justice Tellius can hope for?
The last miles to Leonster stretch long. Far from the Black Knight's fortress, bandits do not shy the road, and a lonely traveler in a gold-trimmed cloak whets their appetite. Ares has to wipe much blood from his sword. One of the scarred bandits cackles about the mythic weapon when he swings his axe in front of his fellows. Ares takes his time with him. But the trail leads nowhere, the bandit knows nothing, and once more emptyhanded, Ares limps back to Leonster Castle.
At night, its golden lights are blinding. How tall and splendid the gates, how silk-wrapped the people on its streets, laughing about simple joys.
Ares sneaks in their shadows like a three-legged dog. Blood from fresh and old wounds stain his clothes, new tears run through his cloak, and the reflection of his sunken eyes in a fever-marred face frightens him. He ducks from the windows and the noble pairs strolling around back into the dark corners of the castle.
Should he not leave? This is their world, not his. When he has proven himself, when he stands triumphantly over the Black Knight, maybe then he can walk among them.
But he is bleeding now, and his fingers are numb from Tellius' winter, so he sneaks into the inner castle yard. The plane trees still bear the cuts of his sword training. From Leif's study seeps candlelight into the yard. And like a moth to the flame, Ares climbs the ivy vines to the balcony.
Leif, as if he has waited all night for the sound of Ares boots on his threshold, opens the door and squeezes his shoulder.
"It is good to see you, my friend," he says. "It has been too long. But come in, I will call someone to reheat the kitchen fires for you. How does roasted bacon sound to you? I could go for another serving myself."
No word about Ares' miserable appearance, no laughter about the failures his new wounds scream out. Leif simply squeezes Ares' shoulder and then embraces him. Leif's dukedom extends only a few miles between the hillocks, and even though he is a year older, he is missing a few inches to match Ares' height. But a greater man than him never existed.
"Were you successful in mastering the sword?" Leif asks when he pulls back.
Ares shakes his head. Now the lecture must come.
But Leif smiles. "You will, my friend. Be patient. Your chance to prove yourself will come. You are already Leonster's best swordsman, soon this title will extend across Tellius as well. And should anyone challenge you, they won't raise their sword for long. Whatever happens, I will count on you to succeed. Come now, I'm hungry."
So the cycle repeats for the following years. Ares wanders through Tellius, searching for the mythic weapon, sharpening his skills for the inevitable moment where stalker and prey must meet to decide their future. And when he loses either the trail or his confidence, he returns to Leonster for the words of encouragement that will erase his doubts. Then for a short while, he believes he needs no mythic weapon to succeed.
Until fifteen years later, when a lost son of Tellius steps through Leif's gates. And with him he brings the answer and the doom to Ares' hunt.
Notes: Neither the traffic stat nor the mail alert issue I mentioned last time has resolved itself, and I must say, it is affecting my motivation to keep posting. ffn seems determined to shift the blame onto my email provider, even though I have done exactly as they instructed and have never experienced issues before. After having posted 700k words across 14 stories, is it truly too much to ask for a functioning service? Basically, I have no idea if anyone will read this, if anyone even can read this, or if all these lines will just get sucked into the void. Fun stuff.
But going back to the actual story, what do you guys think? Sometimes I just find it interesting to explore a new POV character, and knowing everything I have yet planned for Ares, this chapter was especially fun to revisit for editing. But we will return to Lucina's mission soon, don't you worry. In the next chapter, to be exact. I hope you will look forward to it. (Provided I don't get thrown off this site entirely.)